News about plug-in hybrids coming to market soon was everywhere last week. Honda, Volvo, Lync & C0, and General Motors all had something to say on the subject. Some of the announcements were bold; some were partially hidden. Honda kicked things off by releasing final pricing details about the plug-in hybrid version of its multi-faceted Clarity sedan.

Meet The Clarity Plug-In Hybrid

The Clarity may look a lot like an Accord to most shoppers, but it is built on an entirely new chassis designed to accept three modes of propulsion — hydrogen fuel cell, plug-in hybrid, or pure battery electric. Honda now says the plug-in hybrid version will go on sale before Christmas and be priced at $33,400 for the well equipped standard trim version.

The Touring version with more bumpf and features will list for $36,600. Sharp eyed readers will notice those prices are many thousands less than the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid. While the Volt is a fine car, it is a bit tight in its interior dimensions. Expect the Clarity to have more room in its comfy interior for real passengers, especially in the back seat.

The Clarity PHEV will come with a 17 kWh battery — large enough to qualify for the full $7,500 federal tax credit unless and until Republicans in Congress repeal the tax credit entirely. Honda says it has an electric only range of 47 miles, nearly as much as the Volt. Recharging time is given as 2.5 hours using a 240 volt charger.

Volvo and Lync & Co. Will Offer Plug-In Crossovers

Lync & Co 01 top; Volvo XC40 bottom

Volvo and Lync & Co, both owned by Geely, say they are close to bringing plug-in hybrid crossover models to American shores. Sales of the Volvo XC40 PHEV are expected to begin in the second half of 2018. The Lync & Co 01 will debut in China next year before heading to showrooms in Europe the following year. Sales in the US will begin sometime after the European introduction.

Kissing cousins beneath their separate badges, both will both share a plug-in hybrid powertrain with 31 miles of electric range backed up by a 1.5 liter three cylinder gasoline engine. There are reports that a version with 50 miles of range will be offered as well.

A Stealth Reveal For General Motors

Speaking to the Barclays 2017 Global Automotive Conference last week, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said her company has up to 20 electrified models in the pipeline. While she spoke, the image seen above appeared on the screen behind her with a caption reading “New CUV entries — two entries by 2020.”

Fox News was quick to point out that the image bore a remarkable resemblance to the exciting Chevy FNR-X concept unveiled at the Shanghai auto show earlier this year. See for yourself. Notice the resemblance?

Barra made no reference to the image behind her and we don’t know whether it will be built on the Chevy Bolt electric car chassis or the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid platform. Clearly GM has an economic interest in leveraging the investment made in both by applying it to other models in its corporate lineup.

Electric car advocates dislike plug-in hybrids because they have internal combustion engines, but they may well be an important — if temporary — part of the transition to electric vehicles that is gathering momentum worldwide. Sometimes 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing. Especially if some of those plug-ins are crossover utility vehicles which happen to represent the hottest part of the new car market right now.

At the beginning of this decade, people were snickering up their sleeves at Elon Musk and his ridiculous commitment to making electric cars. Nobody is snickering today. The Volkswagen board has just approved a plan to invest $40 billion by 2022 to develop electric cars, autonomous cars, and other mobility solutions. One can argue that Elon Musk is the principal reason why Volkswagen is spending all that cash instead of just continuing to crank out millions of conventional Golf and Passat sedans.

Reuters reports the company will pay for the plan through cost savings throughout its current manufacturing operations and profits from selling more cars. “With the planning round now approved, we are laying the foundation for making Volkswagen the world’s No. 1 player in electric mobility by 2025,” chief executive officer Matthias Mueller told the press on November 17. The new plan is a big step forward from just two months ago when the company said it would invest $20 billion on electric cars and mobility by the year 2030.

KManAuto is a well known chronicler of everything Tesla on his popular YouTube channel. He was on hand at the Tesla Semi extravaganza yesterday (along with our own Kyle Field) and shot some video that includes a first look at the charging port for Tesla’s groundbreaking Class 8 heavy hauler. What he found was that it has room for an 8 pin connector — four times as many as the normal Tesla Supercharger uses for its passenger cars.

Tesla says the Semi will have a range of either 300 or 500 miles, depending on the size battery installed. (Smaller battery equals lower purchase price. Not every tractor needs 500 miles of range.) It also says it can recharge fast enough using one of the company’s new Megachargers to add 400 miles of range in just 30 minutes.

Tesla’s first production car was called the Roadster. Built on a heavily modified Lotus chassis, it was a direct descendant of the tZero, itself a modification of an existing sports car chassis. The tZero was manufactured by AC Propulsion, a small company near Los Angeles, and it used conventional lead-acid batteries. Its primary feature was that is used an AC motor — a revolutionary idea at the time.

In 2oo3, Martin Eberhard asked AC Propulsion to replace the lead-acid batteries with 6,800 lithium-ion laptop batteries. They did and the car was transformed. Shortly thereafter, Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors. One of the early drivers of the tZero upgraded with lithium-ion batteries was a young entrepreneur named Elon Musk. The rest, as they say, is history.

Since its introduction, the Tesla Roadster has become a bit dated. Its performance — stunning at the time — now lags far behind the Tesla Model S P100D. It suffers from a range that can only be called “modest.” As an historic vehicle, it is still important, but it is no longer quite as outré as it once was. Last produced in 2012, Elon Musk has been hinting a replacement was in the works for several years. On November 16, at the end of the splashy reveal for the Tesla Semi, Musk disappeared from the stage and the whole thing seemed to be over … until a few moments later when a pre-production version of the next-generation Roadster unpacked itself from a Semi (well, Tesla designer Franz von Holzhausen drove it out).

The Roadster 2.0 takes everything Tesla has learned about building electric cars, remixes it, and then doubles it. If the Corvette is the halo car for Chevrolet and General Motors, the new Roadster will be the halo car for Tesla. It is insanely quick — 0–60 mph in 1.9 seconds right out of the box in “base” configuration. That will make it the fastest production car ever made. It’s also fastest going 0–100 mph and in a quarter mile sprint.

Tesla watchers know Elon is a big fan of Spaceballs, the Mel Brooks send-up of Star Wars. The movie features a spaceship that can go faster than lightspeed in Ridiculous mode, Ludicrous mode, or — hold onto your light sabers — PLAID! There is little question Musk and his band of merry pranksters will have a hotted-up optional Plaid mode ready for the Roadster once it actually goes into production.

The other specs for the 2+2 style sports car are a 0–100 time of 4.2 seconds and a quarter mile time of 8.9 seconds. There are professional drag racers who have never gone that fast in the quarter mile. The car will have three motors — two in the rear and one in front — for true all-wheel-drive capability.

The Roadster won’t see production until 2020 at the earliest. Tesla has offered no clues about where it might be made, although we know it is busy adding new production facilities at its Fremont factory location. The Roadster is not likely to sell in high numbers, so the company would not need a large assembly line to manufacture the cars.

In the meantime, those interested in owning one of the $200,000+ cars can plunk down a $50,000 deposit now to get on the waiting list. The first Founders Series cars will come fully loaded and retail for $250,000. If that seems like a lot of money, the Bugatti Chiron — a car with similar performance to the Roadster (but not quite as fast) — sells for $2.5 million. Better performance for one tenth the price? Where do we sign up?

When it arrives. the new Roadster will have a top speed of over 250 miles per hour and a range of more than 600 miles, meaning it can drive from LA to San Francisco and back again on a single charge. How can it go so far? Simple. It has a 200 kWh battery pack. That’s double the size of the largest battery Tesla now includes in a Model S or Model X.

What does that suggest about future batteries for the Model S and Model X? Officially, nothing. Tesla has not suggested it is thinking of increasing the size of the battery packs in its regular production cars. In fact, we know that a 100 kWh battery can’t even fit into the new Model 3 midsize car.

Musk was his usual ebullient self as he told the audience about the new Roadster. “The point of doing this is to give a hardcore smackdown to gasoline cars,” he said. “Driving a gasoline sports car is going to feel like a steam engine with a side of quiche.” Musk has made it clear from the start that his goal is not to manufacture the best electric cars money can buy but rather to manufacture the best cars, period. His mission in life is to deal a knockout blow to cars and trucks powered by internal combustion engines.

With this latest addition to the Tesla model lineup, it’s a safe bet that there are lots of aspirin and AlkaSeltzer being passed around in the executive suites of the world’s major automakers this morning.

Update: Below is a video taken by Gas2 and CleanTechnica colleague Kyle Field yesterday at the Tesla Roadster reveal. Ever wonder what 0–60 in 1.9 seconds looks like? Check this out!

A “mystery shopper” study by Ipsos RDA conducted nationwide in September and October revealed something that many of you already know — many car dealers are poorly prepared to sell electric cars. Over the years, our readers have complained long and loud about clueless sales people who have no training in electric cars, dealers who refuse to order enough cars for their inventories, and numerous attempts to switch customers away from electric cars and toward hybrids or conventional cars instead.

We have heard tales of general managers who don’t know electric cars have to be charged prior to driving, sales people who don’t know the difference between hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery electric cars, and a general lack of interest in selling EVs at all. Few dealerships have any brochures about electric cars available and fewer still display them on the showroom floor.

The Ipsos study found, among other things, that “The EV sales process, in many instances, has not been differentiated from the traditional and, in effect, is passive. The availability of inventory, as well as critical EV ownership information in-store (from the sales staff or marketing materials) and online, is concerning and leaves shoppers with unanswered questions.”

The mystery shoppers found a glaring lack of consistency in the approach to electric car sales even at different stores within the same sales organization. “The lack of consistency in the EV shopping experience, even within the same brand, highlights the need for better product knowledge and support to effectively position electric vehicles with the U.S. automotive consumer,” says Todd Markusic, vice president of research at Ipsos.

“This lack of support for the EV shopper lessens the likelihood that they will make the decision to go electric,” says Markusic. “It is surprising that consumers often were not offered an EV test drive, a key experience that showcases the uniqueness of its performance benefits. Most of the time the consumer had to request one.”

A big part of the problem is that dealers and sales representatives make less money selling electric cars than they do full size pickup trucks with all the bells and whistles. If you were in business, you would gravitate toward your highest profit items too, in all likelihood.

Manufacturers say they have little control over how dealers run their businesses but that is clearly an excuse. If you want to know what is going on behind the scenes, keep track of the number of pickup truck ads you see on TV while watching football this weekend. Then contrast that with the number of ads you see for electric cars. That experiment will tell you all you need to know about who is really responsible for the woeful state of electric car sales policies in America.

Speaking to the Barclays 2017 Global Automotive Conference in New York on November 14, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the company’s next generation of electric vehicles will cost 30% less to manufacture than its current electrified models. That decrease will come mostly as the result of lower battery costs according to CBS News.

Barra says the cost of battery cells for the Chevy Volt and Chevy Bolt are currently about $145 per kilowatt-hour. She sees that dropping to around $100 per kilowatt-hour in the next few years. She says her company also expects to reduce manufacturing costs as it gains experience building electric cars. The target for the next generation of electric cars from GM — due in showrooms in 2021 — is 300 miles of range or more. “We are committed to a future electric vehicle portfolio that is profitable,” Barra told the group.

A new manufacturing platform for electric vehicles is also in the works, Barra told the conference. “This will launch in 2021 and support multiple brands and multiple segments,” she said. “At General Motors, we are very much dedicated to leading in battery technology as well as electric vehicles. So this all new EV platform, one of the things we’ll be doing is structurally integrating the batteries into the architecture that will allow us to take out cost and gives us a better flexibility from a design perspective.” GM has committed to rolling out 20 new zero emissions vehicles no later than the year 2023.

Electric vehicle sales remain a tiny fraction of total vehicle sales in the United States, but China is bringing pressure to bear on all major manufacturers who wish to do business in that country by requiring them to sell at least 10% “new energy vehicles” starting next year.

GM sold just under 10 million vehicles last year of which about a third were sold in China. It cannot afford to concentrate solely on the pickup trucks and SUVs that Americans treasure so deeply. China’s policies are driving the reduction in electric vehicle prices that will make them more affordable in the US if and when Americans ever decide that getting 15 mpg is just not good enough any more. Based on current buying habits, that day is still a long way off. Americans like to pay lip service to their commitment to help the environment but only if doing so means they don’t have to make any changes to their comfortable lifestyle.

Most people may associate Mercedes with high end sedans, but the company is a major player in the market for heavy duty vehicles like trucks and buses. Electric cars may be taking a longer time than expected to gain market acceptance, but Mercedes and other manufacturers are wasting no time getting electric bus and truck models to market.

The gloss on this story is that electric vehicles are far more environmentally friendly than their diesel powered cousins. Not only do diesel engines emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, they also spew millions of tons of nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Sulfur dioxide reacts with sunlight to create fine particulates — tiny specks so small they can be absorbed directly into the blood stream through the walls of the lungs. They are accused of being responsible for many health issues, especially respiratory, circulatory, and kidney disease.

Autonomous vehicles use electronic sensors to gather information about the outside world. Those sensors substitute for the eyes and ears of human drivers. The data they collect is fed to high speed computers who turn it into digital maps that are then used to guide the car along its path. The typical assortment of sensors include ultrasound equipment, GPS input, cameras, radar transmitters, and LIDAR.

Hyundai autonomous driving sensor system

LIDAR is much like radar except it used pulses of light instead of pulses of radio waves to probe the surrounding environment. According to to Seeking Alpha, it is accurate to about 3/4″ when travelling at highway speeds while cameras are only accurate to about 4″ under similar conditions. If LIDAR is so accurate, doesn’t that mean it is an essential component for all autonomous vehicles?

In all the talk about The Boring Company, Hyperloop One, and Hyperloop Technologies, tiny Arrivo often gets lost in the shuffle. It was started by Brogan BamBrogan, a former engineer at SpaceX who left to help found Hyperloop One together with Shervin Pishevar. The two had an epic falling out in 2016. BamBrogan stormed out the door and filed a dramatic lawsuit against the company and his former partner alleging breach of fiduciary duty, violating labor laws, wrongful termination, breach of contract, defamation, infliction of emotional distress, and assault, according to Wired.

Now, BamBrogan — whose name came about when he and wife Bambi Liu decided to do a name mashup rather than hyphenate them as ordinary people do — has announced that Arrivo has signed a deal with the Colorado Department of Transportation to develop a “hyperloop inspired system” that will whisk people and cargo between Denver and Boulder in 10 minutes. It normally takes more than an hour to complete the journey.

The big news is in that phrase “hyperloop inspired system.” The Arrivo system will really be more like an enclosed HOV lane than a depressurized tunnel. Covering it is really only to keep dogs and small children away from the workings. The graphic visualization presented by the company bear a striking resemblance to the electric sleds Elon Musk and The Boring Company have showcased in recent public presentations. According to Wired, BamBrogan says building a tube and keeping it in a near-vacuum state is simply too complicated and expensive to make it worth trying.

“The value is not necessarily the top speed for us,” says BamBrogan. “The real value is going point-to-point, no traffic.” Maximum speed of the Arrivo plan is projected to be 200 mph. “If I want to travel really fast between two cities in a low pressure environment inside a metal tube, I would use an airplane,” he says slyly. “They’re very efficient, the ride is smooth, the orange juice is free.”

The company expects to build an engineering and technology center in Aurora, Colorado which will have about 200 employees by the year 2020. The plan is to build a test site running alongside the E-470 toll road that connects Denver to the airport. Arrivo has formed a partnership with AECOM, one of the world’s largest construction firms, to help build the test facility. Funding will come partly from the E-470 public highway authority, partly from the state of Colorado, and partly from Arrivo’s own corporate coffers.

Wired describes the proposed Arrivo system as being similar to the high speed maglev trains currently operating in Japan and China but details about how the system will work have not yet been made public. Arrivo says it hopes to have its first commercial system operational in four to five years time.

Many people say that getting to their destination at supersonic speeds is less of a concern than having access to a system that reduces congestion, moves fairly quickly, operates reliably, and can be relied on to run on time. The Arrivo “hyperloop inspired system” may tick most of those boxes.

Norway is not a member of the European Union, but it is one of the founding nations of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and is part of the European Economic Area (EEA). That makes it a kissing cousin to the EU and subject to many of its economic policies. Over the past decade, Norway has surged ahead of other countries when it comes to electric car adoption largely because those vehicles are exempt from paying the value added tax that applies to conventional vehicles.

The VAT can add thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to the price of a new car in Norway. The exemption means electric and plug-in hybrid cars cost the same or sometimes less to purchase than a traditional diesel or gasoline powered car. But it is set to expire at the end of this year and Norway needs permission from ESA for it to continue, going forward.

With help from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, UPS is planning to convert many of its diesel powered delivery vans (UPS calls them “package cars”) into battery electric trucks beginning as soon as next spring. UPS currently has more than 2,200 trucks plying the streets of New York City. It expects 1,500 of them be electric by 2022.

The program is part of the governor’s program to reduce greenhouse gases within New York by 40% by the year 2030. Alicia Barton, president and CEO of NYSERDA said in a press release, “This project is a prime example of the State’s investment in new and innovative technology that can help us meet Governor Cuomo’s nation-leading clean energy goals. I applaud UPS and Unique Electric Solutions for their leadership in developing this system that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and has tremendous potential to be used by the entire delivery industry.”

Waymo, the self driving arm of Alphabet which in turn is the parent company of Google, is feeling confident the autonomous cars it has created in cooperation with Chrysler are now ready for their first real world use without a human driver on board. After months of testing in and around Phoenix, Arizona, the company says it will soon be ready to begin allowing those cars to provide ride hailing services to paying customers in Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix. It then plans to extend the service to the entire Phoenix area, which is larger in area than London (although much less densely populated.

Waymo CEO John Krafcik gave demonstration rides to members of the press, including Darrell Etheridge of TechCrunch, on November 7. He writes, “Waymo’s stated goal is to ensure safer roads for everyone, and after having spent some time in the fully driverless Pacifica that will be operating in Chandler, I’m more convinced than ever they’re on a path to make this happen. Bringing that truly driverless Level 4 experience to public roads and public riders is a huge step, and a sign we could be hailing an autonomous ride sooner than you might think.”

The yellow school bus is a social icon. It projects an image of bright eyed children eagerly anticipating the acquisition of knowledge during the upcoming school day as they wend their way through the cities and towns all across America. We think of them as zones of safety for our most precious cargo, but in fact they are enclosed metal tubes that subject school children to all the same diesel pollutants that got Volkswagen into so much trouble recently.

Why we throw our arms up in horror when Volkswagen sells diesel powered cars that exceed legal limits for tailpipe emissions and put those responsible in jail for their actions but happily consign school children to riding in diesel powered vehicles to and from school every day is a great mystery. Do we think the diesel engines in those buses run cleaner than the passenger car engines in those Volkswagens? It is to laugh.

Vespa told us last year at this time that it was working on an electric scooter. This year, the company brought its electric offering — the Vespa Elettrica — to the Milan Motorcycle Show, where it revealed lots of details about its latest zero emissions scooter except for the price. The Vespa Elettrica will be available sometime next year, although the company has not said exactly when.

Piaggio, the parent company of Vespa, tells The Verge its electric scooter will have a range of 100 kilometers or 62 miles. That’s about a third that of the Vespa Primavera, the 50 cc model that is the price leader in the company’s gasoline powered lineup. But the Vespa Elettica is not intended for long distance commuting. The company calls it “perfect for city environments” and it probably is exactly that. The torque of its electric motor should offset some of the machine’s lack of range with performance that is superior to a traditional 50 cc machine.

Featured Motorcycle Posts

Advertisement

The content produced by this site is for entertainment purposes only. Opinions and comments published on this site may not be sanctioned by, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sustainable Enterprises Media, Inc., its owners, sponsors, affiliates, or subsidiaries.

The content produced by this site is for entertainment purposes only. Opinions and comments published on this site may not be sanctioned by, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sustainable Enterprises Media, Inc., its owners, sponsors, affiliates, or subsidiaries.